Forecasters say gas prices will go up soon

But tick up should be moderate

The plummeting gas prices that consumers have been enjoying may be coming to an end, analysts predict.

Fuel prices soon will hit bottom, then begin trending upward — but likely won’t pack a wallop to consumers’ wallets like they did in 2011, 2012 and 2013, forecasters said.

“We’re kind of in the two-minute warning, if this is a football game, in the fourth quarter,” said Patrick DeHaan, senior petroleum analyst at GasBuddy, a consumer guide to fuel prices that tracks how much customers pay at nearly 130,000 gas stations in the United States and Canada.

Gas prices continued falling throughout December, plunging to an average of $1.98 for a gallon of regular unleaded in San Antonio on Friday, according to AAA’s Daily Fuel Gauge Report. That’s cheaper than the average prices seen in Austin, Beaumont, Corpus Christi, Houston and Galveston, the report showed.

The Dallas, Fort Worth and Amarillo markets fared even better, with average prices there around $1.90 per gallon Friday, according to AAA’s data. Nationally, the average hovered at $2.23 per gallon — well below the $2.76 average seen a month earlier.

A shift upward probably will happen sooner rather than later, another analyst said.

“I think, most likely, we’re 5 to 10 cents from the bottom,” said Tom Kloza, global head of energy analysis at Oil Price Information Service. “In 30 previous years of watching gasoline futures, they always hit a bottom, generally in November and December, sometimes as late as January. And they bounce higher as you get toward spring training and baseball, things like that.

DeHaan agreed that gas prices are probably “very close” to bottoming out, unless crude oil prices continue to decline. He noted the drop in gas prices now has matched the decline in oil prices.

“Prices this time of year are just about always getting close to their lows,” DeHaan said.

Texas was among a handful of states that fell on the lower end of the spectrum of fuel prices in 2014, GasBuddy reported.

South Carolina had the nation’s lowest average fuel price last year. Other states joining Texas on the lower end of prices were New Mexico, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi, Virginia, Tennessee, Arkansas, Missouri and Kansas, GasBuddy’s data showed.

The market’s specifications typically change when spring arrives, which usually makes gasoline more expensive, Kloza added. But U.S. refiners are distributing record amounts of crude and feed stock and likely will soon find they have too much product unless they cut back on production, he said.

“Instinct tells me that a lot of the pessimism and a lot of the very weak fundamentals are already being priced into the market so that there will be a rally and that average prices in 2015 will be higher than they are right now,” he said.

While consumers likely will pay more at the pump this year, those prices will remain sharply below levels seen in 2011, 2012 and 2013, Kloza said.

Oil Price Information Service forecast a national average of $2.45 per gallon this year, which Kloza said is 90 cents lower than last year’s national average.

It’s also much lower than prices seen in recent years. In 2013, the year’s average price nationally was $3.53 per gallon, compared to $3.64 in 2012 and $3.53 in 2011, according to data collected by the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

Peggy O’Hare reports on housing, demographics and the census for the San Antonio Express-News’ Metro Desk. She joined the Express-News in April 2013. She is a former reporter at the Houston Chronicle, where she worked for 11 years. She is a graduate of Texas A&M University.